Lookback: In 1920s, first plane built in Muskegon crashes 7 months after maiden voyage

Seven months after its first flight, the first plane built in Muskegon carried two men to their deaths.

In May 1929, The Chronicle said,

2 KILLED AS WING CRUMPLES ON PLANE

Here is a page from the March 20, 1929 Muskegon Chronicle, showing photos involving the plane crash near Mona Lake.MLive.com file

At a height of 2,000 feet over the edge of Mona Lake near the Float Bridge at noon Sunday, a wing crumpled on the homemade parasol type monoplane of E.W. Beebe and the plane fell end over end to earth.

The plane crashed in splinters and from the wreckage were taken the lifeless bodies of George F. King, 28 years old, a licensed pilot, and Morris Raymond Mellinger, 25 years old, a licensed mechanic and part owner of the plane.

Residents along Mona Lake and from a greater distance heard the report as the wing crumpled. They saw pieces of canvas and splinters of wood fill the air. And then they witnessed the downward flight of the plane as the pilot tried desperately to right it. Then they heard it crash to earth 150 feet from the house of George D. Hume, wholesale grocer of Muskegon.

Due to the uncertain course of the plane as it started its downward flight, residents in that section fled for shelter not knowing where it would end its drop. Once the plane crashed, however, Leslie Martin, caretaker at the Hume property, Mr. Hume, E.L. Ransford, John Wierengo and others, rushed to the spot. Mr. King’s body was found along the edge of the wreckage, the plane having split in two parts at the pilot’s seat, while buried in the wreckage was the battered body of Mr. Mellinger.

Only a small portion of the tail of the plane was intact. The Hispano-Suiza 180-horsepower motor was buried in the ground.

From as far away as the Henry Street plant of Campbell, Wyant and Cannon, the fall of the plane was witnessed and from there came a call to the Muskegon Police Dept. and a request for an ambulance. Other calls came rapidly and Coroner L.B. Lee arrived and took charge of the bodies and the crowd increased.

Residents of the neighborhood told their versions of the tragedy, the first fatal accident connected with aviation circles here. The crowd increased and the usual souvenir hunters were there in numbers as they grabbed at splinters of the plane and carried them away. A woman was stricken, as the bodies were removed from the wreckage and officers arrived to drive back the crowd, close the road to the scene and keep souvenir hunters and others away.

E.L. Ransford was working in his yard near Mona Lake when he saw the plane.

“Usually I look up and see a plane and then forget it as many fly over us,” he explained. “The plane was flying so smoothly that I kept my eyes on it. The pilot went in a nosedive and as he started to pull himself out, I heard a report and almost instantly the air was filled with canvas and splinters. A wing had crumbled.

"The plane did not shoot down as a dead bird, but as a wounded bird. It rolled over and over as the pilot tried to halt the flight downward with the one wing. The course was so uncertain that I feared it was coming down in my yard at one time. Finally it crashed to earth in the Hume yard. We ran to the scene and we found the mass of wreckage and two lifeless bodies.”

Mr. Hume said that Mr. Wierengo, Mr. Martin and himself were in the yard when the plane started down.

“We were near the greenhouse and I feared that the plane was going to strike where we stood,” Mr. Hume said. “We ran, but as the plane neared the ground it changed its course slightly and struck about 150 feet from the house.”

Mr. Hume said that when they reached the wreckage they found Mr. King’s body which had been thrown just clear of the plane.

“We did not know at the time that there was more than one in the plane, “ Mr. Hume said. “As we shoved over the wreckage we saw a man’s arm and found Mellinger’s body.”

Mr. Hume said the plane kept rolling over and over as it came down.

Mr. Beebe, who designed the plane and was aided by Mr. Mellinger and others in its building, was unaware that the ship was out until he heard it fly over his house. He believes that the wing was weakened when it received a bad bump recently in landing after a solo flight by Mr. Mellinger and that this caused the wing to crumple yesterday. He says he would not have agreed to let the plane be taken out until an inspection had been made of it.

It was an experimental plane, one which had attracted much interest in aviation circles here. The plane operated under an experimental license but it never had undergone a stress analysis, so vital to a plane, especially of a new design.

The flight yesterday was started from the Continental Airport. The two men had been in the air only a few minutes when the accident took place. They flew over Muskegon and headed out toward Mona Lake and those who saw them while over the city say they were up around 2,000 feet.

The Beebe plane represented months of work by Mr. Beebe, Mr. Mellinger, Earl R. Cooper and others. Mr. Mellinger was employed by the Independent Electric Co. and he spent his nights with Mr. Beebe and others working on the plane. Late last October, the new ship made its maiden test flight with Mr. King at the controls. It performed in excellent style and since that time the flying of the ship had been done largely by Mr. King.

FIRST PLANE, FIRST FATAL CRASH

Two years before the fatal 1929 crash, E.W. Beebe’s first airplane ride almost instantly transformed him from a violin maker into the designer of the first airplane built in Muskegon.

Within seven months of its first flight, Beebe’s plane would also be involved in the first fatal airplane crash here.

According to the Chronicle, “He resolved almost before (he) had alighted from his first flight that if flying was so enjoyable to him it must be to others and that if others could design and build and plane so could he.”

When it came to making violins, there was never any doubt about Beebe’s craftsmanship.

“(For 18 years) he was learning under the tutelage of his father, who was a violin maker before him,” The Chronicle said.

His schooling in aircraft design and construction was considerably briefer.

In the two years following his first flight, Beebe obtained an “outline of engineering policies and general information with regard to the construction of different types of airplanes” from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, a section of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Three years after the plane crashed, Beebe and Forrest King -- brother of George King, who piloted the doomed plane on its final flight -- opened a flying service in Muskegon.